


take me off your worry list

by stylesofstraight_edge



Series: AU Where Criminal Minds Characters Care Enough To Talk To Each Other [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Episode: s02e15 Revelations, Everyone needs to stop hurting him, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Jason Gideon is bad at feelings, Past Drug Use, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reid is my baby, So now I’m fixing it, Spencer Reid Needs a Hug, Suicidal Thoughts, The team should've helped Reid after Revelations, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, and they didn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 18:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18946855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stylesofstraight_edge/pseuds/stylesofstraight_edge
Summary: Reid figured that almost happy was acceptable. Nobody cared enough to get him past acceptable and into “I can smile without wanting to cry”, and this was as far as he could get on his own.





	take me off your worry list

**Author's Note:**

> I was rewatching Criminal Minds, and it really got under my skin the way that my poor baby Spencer Reid was traumatized and a whole team of experts in human behavior recognized he was suffering through PTSD and drug addiction and left him to figure it out for himself. Here's me attempting to fix this in a more emotionally satisfying manner.  
> Also, I'm a sucker for Gideon's surrogate-dad relationship with Spence and I'm sad that more wasn't done with it before Gideon left the show. Enjoy some dad feels.

It was months of shooting up in bathrooms and waking up screaming and showing up 30 minutes late to briefings before anyone made Spencer Reid talk about what happened to him at Tobias Hankel’s hands. Morgan had given him a small lecture about empathy, which felt more like a dismissal than an honest attempt to help. _It’s called empathy, and it’s a good thing._

It’s called PTSD, and it’s a shit thing. Morgan should know better.

He tried not to let that bother him. After all, it wasn’t like Morgan was the only one who didn’t understand. Emily had given it her best shot, in the form of asking him what the hell he was doing. She didn’t know him, so she couldn’t predict that making what was happening to him his fault was the worst thing she could do. Hotch and Gideon sent him all the concerned (and slightly disappointed) looks in the world, and he could feel JJ holding herself back from saying something to him. Maybe the worst was Garcia. It physically hurt him to see the way her face crumbled when she thought he wasn’t looking. They all did their best to hide it. And other than Prentiss’ accusations and Morgan’s 10-second pep talk, nobody spoke a word to him about it.

At the time, he had been grateful. They left him to wallow in his misery in peace. He didn’t want their words, their opinions, their sad or horrified eyes. But he did need them. He needed someone to tell him the truth. To take the needle out of his hand and tell him they still cared about him and didn’t think he was broken or lesser because he went and got himself kidnapped.

It didn’t take a genius (though Spencer was one) to recognize that what he was doing wasn’t healthy. He had slowly self-destructed over the months that followed his abduction. His life was pinballing from one horror to the next, between the blood and gore of the cases and the fear and pain of the nightmares and flashbacks, not to mention the cravings, the panic attacks… it was a vicious cycle and a very noticeable one. Someone should’ve confronted him. It was dangerous, the way they left him to his own devices. It also sent a very uncomfortable message: _we don’t really care if you live or die_. It wasn’t true, of course. He could tell in the way they looked at him, in the way they tried to shelter him from the world and minimized the time he went unsupervised. But truth didn’t make awful thoughts any less invasive.

He didn’t really understand why “I need help but won’t ask for it” was such a difficult concept for some of the best minds in the world to grasp.

But apparently, it was too hard, too much effort that he wasn’t worth. So Reid pulled himself through on his own. His solution mostly consisted of not processing it at all. When Tobias’ voice haunted him or the images taunted him at night, he suffered through it and then threw away whatever emotions and thoughts were left behind. Unhealthy? Definitely. Necessary? Absolutely.

While this strategy was ugly and painful and very obvious, it did get him off of Dilaudid and stopped the tears before they came, and he figured that was acceptable. Nobody cared enough to get him past acceptable and into “I can smile without wanting to cry”, and this was as far as he could get on his own.

He wasn’t surprised that Gideon was the one to decide he couldn’t spectate on Spencer’s devolution anymore. He _was_ surprised, and disappointed, that Gideon waited until he no longer needed help.

He offered to take Reid out for a drink, which might as well have been a bright, glowing sign reading ‘I need to have a serious and uncomfortable talk with you’. Reid had given up running from the pain a long time ago, and figured now was as good a time as any to stop running from his team too.

A part of him was thankful. He didn’t need the help anymore, but it was nice of Gideon to finally show he cared. Or at least, put some effort into pretending.

Gideon spent the first five minutes just looking at Spencer, and the young genius did not care for that at all. His friend had these piercing, dissecting brown eyes that felt as if they could reach into your soul and pull out all the things you hoped would never see the light of day. Gideon could surmise your whole life story from looking at you for long enough, and Spencer wasn’t overly keen on waiting for that to happen.

“Could you please stop?” The older man politely looked away at his request, but Reid could feel Gideon continuing to analyze him. “Seriously. Don’t do that."

“What am I doing?”

“You know. R-Reading me. Profiling. Observing. Try—trying to figure out what you want to know without having to say anything. I-I hate that. You brought me here to talk to me, not stare at me.”

“You haven’t really shown a strong inclination to speak with me, or anyone.” _Well, you haven’t really been trying that hard, have you?_

"I’d much prefer talking to you digging into my brain with your eyes.”

“Are you willing to answer a question about Tobias Hankel?” Spencer sighed and plunged himself past the point of no return.

“I imagined we weren’t here to discuss the weather. What… wh-what do you want to know?” Gideon looked mildly surprised.

“You’ll just tell me? Just like that?” Spencer suppressed the urge to glare.

“Gideon, when was the last time you actually asked me about this?”

“It’s been quite some time.”

“So you probably don’t have a great grasp on my willingness to speak about the subject. I’ve been ready to talk about this for a while now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Just… none of you c-cared enough to ask.” The older man’s expression didn’t falter an inch, but Reid knew the words hurt him. “I’m sick of all of this. The hiding and lying and the way that you all pretend not to look at me differently. You’re an expert in human behavior. Do I really seem so fragile that the mere mention of his name will break me to pieces?” 

"No, Reid. I never thought that.” Spencer didn’t bother informing him of the plethora of evidence that proved to the contrary.

“What is your question?”

“I tried to send you a message. On a victim’s webcam. I thought it might be broadcasting to where you were. Did you ever see it?” Spencer groaned internally and wished he didn’t know Gideon as well as he did. But he knew this wasn’t a yes or no question. This man did not ask yes or no questions. Being ready to talk about it and being happy to talk about it were two very different things.

“Yes.”

“Did it…” there was a very rare sign of hesitation in his mentor’s voice that he immediately picked up on. Gideon wasn’t even trying to hide it, and that was more bewildering still. He was a flat wall of solid, emotionless gray and nothing could shake his foundations. Reid could count on one hand the number of times he had seen Gideon falter. It wasn’t in his nature. In this line of work, faltering meant the verge of insanity or the threat of death. The older man never left himself vulnerable to either, even when off the clock. “Did it help?”

And Spencer was confused when he noted that Gideon was asking because he didn’t know. Not because he wanted to gauge the reaction, not because he wanted to observe the level of truth his protégé was comfortable divulging, he was asking because he wanted to know. Gideon’s questions rarely meant anything, for he almost always already knew the answer by the time he asked. There was a kind of raw emotion here that Spencer didn’t know how to identify.

"Sort of.” Which was the truth, but he knew it wouldn’t be good enough. Spencer wouldn’t settle for such a vague answer if it was given to him. There was still a bit of himself, too, that wanted to prove he was okay with talking about this, that the past couldn’t hurt him anymore. But it was every bit as much about wanting to protect his friend from the truth as it was about keeping the past off his tongue. Reid tried to shake the feeling of Tobias’ fists and a cold floor to die on as he searched for a better way to explain. “It, um…” Spencer downed the remainder of his drink and asked for another one. “It did at first. Seeing you. Hearing you. A reminder you were looking, and that if anyone could find me, it was you.” Gideon gave a flinch, quicker than the 53 beats per second of a hummingbird’s wings but Reid noticed it. Surely Gideon knew what came next.

“But?”

“You saw it, didn’t you?” Spencer had to make a conscious effort not to dig his nails into his palms, reminding himself that pain to distract from pain was a wildly unhelpful coping mechanism. It was preferable to analyzing the likelihood of an unsub bringing his victim back to life for a reason other than the wish to immediately kill him again.

The odds were very close to zero. He’d done the math during dozens of sleepless nights.

“You saw him kill me?”

_You are stronger than him. He cannot break you._

**_You think you can defy me?!_ **

Gideon swallowed hard. Reid was sure his mind had already worked out the next thing he would say, but his mentor’s mouth kept forming words that his throat couldn’t voice. Spencer gave him the time he needed.

“Because of what I said?” The younger man could hear it, what Gideon wasn’t saying. _I killed you?_

“You didn’t…” Spencer searched for the right way to say it and found, as he often had during his long road to recovery, that there was just no good way to go about this. “I-It wasn’t your fault.”

“But he saw it, and that’s why he beat you? That’s why he showed us? To…” _To punish me?_

 _No, Jason. For once, this isn’t about you_.

"He thought that I was something I wasn’t. He thought I could control you. The message went up that the video was a virus, and somehow he imagined I was responsible. Wouldn’t… didn’t matter to him when I told him I couldn’t do anything. I was with him, not with you.” Reid could feel the forgotten ghosts of past hurts lancing through his body. The bones of his face that wanted to cave in under every fist that came down on his flesh. The rage in his tormentor’s eyes. Raphael, a void echoing back at him. “Didn’t care. H-He didn’t listen.” Gideon let out a sound that bordered on a growl.

"How could I have been so stupid?” He whispered fiercely. “The man ran his whole operation through computers, of course, he’d be able to see it. He was going through a psychotic break. He would believe whatever version of reality best suited his needs.”

“Gideon,” Spencer said gently, because even the angriest and most betrayed parts of him didn’t want to see his friend fall apart over guilt for actions he couldn’t control. When he had sent that message, Spencer knew Gideon was trying to help, trying to reach him. It was better comfort than anything he had received after his rescue. Gideon was missing the point by a country mile. It wasn’t what he did that hurt Spencer. It was what he didn’t do. “I didn’t die because of you.” The older man’s jaw clenched around his grief.

“He beat you and tortured you because of my carelessness.”

“I had just been forced to choose innocent people to die. Hearing your voice, having someone tell me I wasn’t a failure to the team… it was the farthest thing from careless you could’ve done. I lived because of you. I survived because of you." Spencer didn’t say _and then you left me to figure everything else out on my own. You saved me and didn’t bother making sure there was still something left to save._  He didn’t say it. He really wanted to. 

"You seem…” Gideon trailed off. “Better.”

“Better?”

“You know. You were irritable before. Angry. Short with us.” And that made Spencer want to scream. Yes. Obviously. And none of you did a damn thing.

“I was addicted to heroin, Gideon, what did you expect?”

“Are you upset with us?” _The truth. Now or never. He’ll know if you lie, anyway._

“Honestly? Yes.”

“I understand.” Spencer looked back up. Straight into those eyes. Tried to ignore the way they snuck under his skin and began peeling him apart.

“Do you? I could’ve died. None of you thought that was important enough to intervene until I went so far as to miss a plane. You must’ve known. All of you **must** have known.”

“You didn’t want our help.”

“You’re right. I didn’t. But what I wanted shouldn’t have mattered, I was in no position to know what was best for myself. Because what I wanted was to be dead, so I don’t think my desires should’ve been part of the equation.” Gideon’s expression didn’t waver, but Spencer was used to that.

“I’m sorry. You must know we wouldn’t have let anything happen to you.” Something in the way he said it made the young genius angry.

“You shouldn’t have waited until it was almost too late. Heroin has the highest chance of any drug of proving fatal on its own. You know that. And you know that what he got me hooked on was not heroin on its own.” Reid resisted the temptation to spout off some additional facts about addiction. Recitation was always a stress reliever for him, but he didn’t want to give Gideon an excuse to stray from the subject.

“We were reckless.” Spencer grit his teeth against the hurt and bitterness surging through his veins.

“You let me think you didn’t give a damn about me. Why?”

“I thought you knew that we cared, Reid.”

“You think I could trust anything my head told me? You guys love me for my mind, right? Except,” Spencer took in a deep breath and tried to calm his shaking hands. “Except my mind was in that graveyard, in that shed with three people inside a single body, and half the time I was sure I was still there and I was never getting out. I-I couldn’t use my mind for anything. I couldn’t rely on myself at all. And—and you just left me like that!” Gideon gave him a sad, sobering look. “

"I’ve spent almost every day of the past 30 years getting into other people’s heads and picking them apart and figuring them out. I spend so much time trying to understand them, criminals, madmen, that I sometimes lose my ability to actually deal with normal people with normal needs. I take people apart, Spencer. I don’t always know how to put them back together again. I didn’t know what to do. You’re the brightest mind I’ve ever known. I imagined you could come up with much better solutions than me. I didn’t think I had anything to offer you that would be worth anything.” Reid could see where Gideon was coming from. Truly, he could, and that didn’t make any of it easier. Not even a little. Because anything would’ve been better than what they did. Most of it would’ve hurt more, but nothing could’ve helped less than doing nothing.

“I-I just don’t understand. I don’t understand. You knew what he did. Beat me, drugged me, held a gun to my head, made me choose who he killed. You took your 30 years worth of understanding of the human mind and decided the best course of action was to do nothing.” A cloud came over Gideon’s face, and he looked unsure of himself. Gideon was used to being right, Spencer knew, and didn’t doubt that the older man didn’t know what to do when he wasn’t. Usually, for him there was a way to fix the mistake, catch the unsub when he got away, save the next victim before it was too late, but this… Gideon had missed his chance. He made a choice and chose wrong, and not even Gideon could turn back time.

“I took my 30 years worth of understanding of the human mind and the first thing I thought of was that you don’t like emotions. You don’t like sharing yourself with the team. You don’t like talking about your feelings. It makes you supremely uncomfortable. I didn’t want to make you more uncomfortable. From what I knew about you and how you’ve reacted to things in the past, I truly thought the best thing to do was let you work through it on your own. I thought an intervention would only give you anxiety and slow down your recovery.” Spencer tried to swallow that explanation. Really, he did, because he knew it was the truth. It was exactly the sort of thing Gideon would do. Looking back, he couldn’t think of a time his mentor tried to start a conversation about emotions with him. He always let Reid bring it up.

But he couldn’t bring Hankel up. He couldn’t do it. He needed someone else to make him process it. He needed someone to push another option in his face that didn’t involve a needle and a belt and a horrid flood of terrible memories.

“You know you’re the only reason I’ve stayed on this team as long as I have, right?”

“I know.” That didn’t really make it better either. He knew Gideon cared. He had always known that. But it was getting hard to stomach how bad he was at it.

Gideon left the team only a few months afterward, leaving behind a note about mistakes and bad explanations and not understanding the world. Spencer couldn’t help but hear the same apologies. Couldn’t help but notice there was only a letter left behind for him. Couldn’t help but wonder how much of Gideon’s sudden disappearance had to do with the job, and how much was actually the way he failed his prodigy.

The belief in happy endings.

He hoped Gideon found it.


End file.
